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bruise
Posts: 101
Joined: Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:51 am

Lineation

Post by bruise » Fri Jan 28, 2022 7:37 am

Just an interesting article, i thought:

Dear Bad Writers, Read This Poetic Line Breaks Guide

The examples towards the end are good, i thought. The finger-wagging less good! What do you think?

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Tracy Mitchell
Posts: 3179
Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 3:58 pm

Re: Lineation

Post by Tracy Mitchell » Fri Jan 28, 2022 9:55 am

Bruise -- you and I must be following a similar thread -- the article you link is excellent, I stumbled onto it yesterday and didn't get it read.  But I read it this morning.  I need to go back at some point and make notes of the the better points.

Cheers.

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Tracy Mitchell
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Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 3:58 pm

Re: Lineation

Post by Tracy Mitchell » Fri Jan 28, 2022 11:15 am

Finger wagging -- yeah, you're right, the author is pretty confident that he has the superior knowledge of all things line breaking.  And as you say, his examples are excellent.  I found value in his rules of thumb, which are good guides when all things are equal.  I don't believe they are universals though.

A main problem is that when I am writing poems, the overwhelming bulk of poetic lines I am trying to create DO NOT have the low-hanging-fruit which appear in his examples.  Those were pretty easy decisions he presented.  There are tougher calls in every poem than those which he presents.  Examples should be clear, and his are, and by necessity simplify it far beyond what we normally deal with when writing.

Perhaps my toughest and most frequent like break quandary is when the natural and best line break leaves the line so significantly longer than other lines of the poem that it looks like a formatting error.  Picking where the line should break when there is no evident candidate place is a bad as too many good candidates.

Several years ago I worked through The Art of the Poetic Line, by Joseph Longenbach.  It was a marvelous exercise, but the confidence I feel in my line-endings comes and goes.  

I wrote a poem a number of years ago which draws widely diverging enjambment suggestions, which underscores for me how difficult forming and ending a line can be, and how it is certainly more art than science.    The text of that poem is set out below -- without any line breaks. 

Bruise, as an exercise, if you are interested, and anyone else, how would you lineate it:

Freckles You Recognize

One thing might first mean, and then another– when they collide you find what makes thunder crack above the heads of lightning bugs– be sharp, quick, pick right, le mot juste, again feel the pull, see words snap like magnets pop together and in that way make a chain or a zipper which, when pulled tight closes the back of a black dress so perfect around the curves of the brown eyed girl with freckles you recognize as the poem you always meant to write.


I have two versions of it - different approaches to the line formations.  If you are interested, I'd like to see your version, so please post it here. And this goes for anyone -- the more the merrier.

Cheers.

T
 

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Colm Roe
Posts: 2697
Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:45 am

Re: Lineation

Post by Colm Roe » Fri Jan 28, 2022 7:45 pm

Jeez Tracy, talk about head-wrecks!
This is the best I can come up with  :roll:


Freckles You Recognize

One thing might
first mean,
and then another–
when they collide
you find
what makes thunder crack
above the heads of lightning bugs–
be sharp, quick,
pick right, le mot juste, 
again feel the pull,
see words snap
like magnets pop together
and in that way
make a chain or a zipper
which, when pulled tight
closes the back of a black dress
so perfect around the curves
of the brown eyed girl with freckles
you recognize
as the poem
you always meant to write.

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Tracy Mitchell
Posts: 3179
Joined: Sun Jan 07, 2018 3:58 pm

Re: Lineation

Post by Tracy Mitchell » Sun Jan 30, 2022 9:50 am

Colm, 
Very nice set of line break decisions.  There are so many 50/50 judgments in this, right?  Your choices come close to one of my surviving drafts, but do wander apart in some places.  I think the decisions of where to break the line are a large part of the art part of poetry.

Cheers.

T

Marcomando
Posts: 24
Joined: Sat Feb 05, 2022 1:31 pm

Re: Lineation

Post by Marcomando » Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:17 am

Interesting thread Tracy. I read the article and mostly agree with the ‘rules’ except there are lots of ways and occasions when the rules might justifiably be set aside.

I enjoyed your poem too and had a couple of goes at delineating it - but I could keep playing with it I’m sure… A couple of cheeky edits too hope you don’t mind!

Freckles

Meaning one thing first then another
(when they collide discovering
what makes thunder crack
above the heads of lightning bugs),
you must be sharp, quick, pick right,
le mot juste,
again feel the pull, see words snap
like magnets pop together,
and in that way make a chain
or a zipper which, when pulled tight
closes the back of a black dress
so perfect around the curves
of the brown-eyed girl with freckles
you recognize as the poem
you always meant to write.

Or:

Meaning one thing first then another
(when they collide discovering
what makes thunder crack
above the heads of lightning bugs),
you must be sharp, quick, pick right,
le mot juste, again feel the pull,
see words snap like magnets
pop together, and in that way
make a chain or a zipper which,
when pulled tight closes the back
of a black dress so perfect around
the curves of the brown-eyed girl
with freckles you recognize
as the poem you always meant to write.

‘Zipper which’? Hmm…

Good fun, thanks

Marc

ajduclos
Posts: 1746
Joined: Mon Apr 01, 2019 1:35 pm

Re: Lineation

Post by ajduclos » Sat Feb 19, 2022 8:33 am

Well, I had a very very long post mostly complete, but somehow, I must have fat-fingered something and "POOF" it's all gone.

So, I'll be brief.  I will read the article, Bruise, after this exercise - thanks.  Tracy, thanks for the poem for the exercise.

I highly recommend a thoroughly enjoyable novel, The Anthologist, by a well-respected local novelist and non-fiction writer, Nicholson Baker.  He spends the book both praising and craping on poets and poetry, and does in a psuedo-informative way.  He delves into enjambment at length.  Once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. 

Here's a few shots at exercise.  Afterwards, I will look at Colm's and Marc's versions.

 Freckles You Recognize

One thing might first mean,
and then another–
when they collide
you find what makes thunder crack
above the heads of lightning bugs–
be sharp, quick, pick right, 
le mot juste, 
again feel the pull,
see words snap like magnets pop together
and in that way make a chain or a zipper
which, when pulled tight
closes the back of a black dress so perfect
around the curves of the brown eyed girl with freckles
you recognize as the poem you always meant to write.

or

One thing might first mean,
and then another–
when they collide
you find
what makes thunder crack
above the heads of lightning bugs–
be sharp, quick,
pick right, 
le mot juste, 
again feel the pull,
see words snap
like magnets pop together
and in that way
make a chain
or a zipper
which,
when pulled tight
closes the back of a black dress
so perfect
around the curves
of the brown eyed girl with freckles
you recognize
as the poem
you always meant to write.

Or

One thing might first mean, and then another–
when they collide you find what makes thunder crack
above the heads of lightning bugs–
be sharp, quick, pick right, le mot juste, 
again feel the pull,
see words snap like magnets pop together
and in that way make a chain or a zipper
which, when pulled tight
closes the back of a black dress so perfect
around the curves of the brown eyed girl with freckles
you recognize as the poem you always meant to write.  

 

 

  
 

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